Either you are a high-rated movie star or a newbie, your stock can drop at any moment, and with tenacious paparazzi and social media now the norm, that mystery and mystique of movie stars is no more. Except for one — the actor who continues to have that movie-star aura and, frankly, is the last of them. Tom Cruise.
With the release of his latest action movie, “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation,” Cruise is poised to rule the weekend box office once again.
But here’s the magic of Cruise: With any negative press he receives, his movies always seem to cause us all to hit the reset button on him. Why is that? Because we can forgive our movie stars. If they can continue to entertain, all is forgiven!
Let’s look at his contemporaries, who are summed up in this photo from 1983’s “The Outsiders.”
These guys were known as the future of Hollywood in the 1980s. They all had their time and today are nowhere near Cruise’s stardom.
Cruise has topped them, being ahead of the curve — first in choosing dramatic projects (“Rain Man,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “A Few Good Men”) and then being America’s heartthrob (“Jerry Maguire”).
Where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone failed at staying action stars, Cruise excelled by keeping his action as practical as possible.
One can argue that actors like Brad Pitt and George Clooney are at the same level of movie stardom as Cruise, but it’s not the same. They don’t rake in the kind of box-office cash Cruise does (Cruise‘s films usually make at least $200 million; Pitt‘s and Clooney‘s films usually make $100-$150 million worldwide).
But being a movie star also means to know when to stay off the radar. Cruise has done this masterfully. And leading up to the release of “Going Clear,” though some rumors have come out that Cruise has seen the movie and now wants to leave Scientology. True or not, it only helps his image going into this weekend.
While Cruise has become one of the best at selling a movie all over the world, Pitt and Clooney take that under-the-radar stance a little too seriously. They pop out to hock their movies, but not with the gusto Cruise does, which this week included his doing a lip-synch battle against Jimmy Fallon.
There are a lot of popular actors in Hollywood. From the newbies like Chris Pratt to the ones who have blown us away for years yet are still somewhat harder to relate to, like Robert Downey Jr. But with Cruise, it’s different. We’ve marveled at Cruise’s diversity as an actor throughout his career, the many iconic moments he’s given us, and the energy he gives every role and press appearance; Perhaps that’s why we always find ourselves rooting for him.
Collected And Prepared By Roxtar Amir
